1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a used paper recycling apparatus and its constituent devices, and more particularly to a used paper recycling technology for regenerating into recycled paper, at the site of origin of used paper, without discarding the used paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
Used paper of various types occurs not only in government offices or private companies, but also in daily life or general household. Used paper is usually discarded, incinerated, or disposed as refuse.
On the other hand, in the global concern about effective use of limited resources on earth, various technologies have been developed to regenerate and reuse the used paper being disposed and discarded so far.
Such used paper recycling technologies are mostly installed in paper making industry, and the water paper recycling plant requires, like the ordinary paper making plant, a vast land, an immense investment, and a huge quantity of water and chemicals for the purpose of high speed and mass production and high quality of recycled paper.
For recycling of used paper, a tremendous manual labor is needed for collecting used paper, and used paper collection involves various problems, such as mixing of foreign matter by garbage collectors, defective classification due to lack of knowledge about used paper recycling, and entry of harmful objects, and if used paper is collected, in order to recycle by 100 percent, final checking by specialists and cleaning works are needed. On the other hand, confidential documents are not easily recycled and are mostly incinerated, and the recycling rate is low.
To solve these problems of used paper recycling, an effective method is the technology capable of recycling at the site of origin of used paper, and from such point of view, a new system is proposed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H6-134331.
This apparatus is a wet process shredder for shredding used paper into small pieces while adding a small mount of water, and shredded chips from the shredder are sent outside to a recycling plant, and used as material for recycled paper.
Shredded chips from the shredder are deformed into pulp, and are not in the state of piece of paper, and a high confidentiality is guaranteed, and it is expected to promote recycling of confidential documents.
This wet process shredder is a giant machine installed in a wide space, and it can be used only in a large office, and it is not suited to small office or general household. If shredded chips may be used as material for recycled paper, processing is possible only in large recycling plant, and the recycling cost is high and it is not economical.